Would you go to a funeral....

[Ruthanne]

Before my family gave up on funerals and moved over to the "let's incinerate him and have a big party afterwards" school of thought, we had more than one dysfunctional funeral.

There was the great-uncle's second wife that arranged for someone to come to the cemetery right after the funeral and buy back all the flowers from her. That didn't go over very well.

There was the funeral where a mentally-ill niece ran down the aisle of the funeral home and dived head-first into the coffin yelling, "______, _______, don't go! I'm coming with you!"

There was a great-aunt's funeral where a portion of the family was screaming accusations at each other in the parking lot outside the funeral home. Before AND after the funeral, no less.

But the best one was my father's cousin's funeral. "Bud" had been messing around with the wife of a jealous man and had received a fatal dose of lead as a result. Of course, the family story was that it was just a case of mistaken identity. Sure. Anyway, the funeral is about to start in a small country church. The widow, "Beulah" (Big Beulah, as she was known in the family for very good cause), had just been seated when the girlfriend slithers in, dressed in black from head to toe, heavily veiled. She sits down halfway down the church and starts in. "Oh, Bud, you were too good for this world! <SOB, SOB, SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF> Bud, what am I going to do without you? <SOB, SOB, SNIFF, SNIFF, SNIFF> Oh, Bud, why did you have to leave us. < More sobbing and sniffing>"

Beulah gets up, steps out into the aisle, arranges her veil back, walks down the aisle and snatches the sobbing girlfriend out of the pew and proceeds to mop the floor with her. I was not quite six, but I can remember the scene like I was looking at it on Facebook. All I could see was Beulah's huge, yellowed-girdled-covered butt (her dress had ridden up) as she kneeled on the girlfriend and banged her head on the floor. My mother was trying to get me to get down from the pew but no way was I going to miss THAT. The men get Beulah off the girlfriend, hustle the girlfriend out, and get Beulah brushed off, properly covered and back in her pew. The funeral proceeds. Luckily there were no more fireworks at the gravesite.

See why I don't like "funerals"?

Your experiences with funerals has me laughing and smiling. I can just picture it all! The worst thing that happened for me at a funeral is that I started laughing uncontrollably, it was my grandfather's funeral and he had done some pretty bad things to me.

Back to the OP. I would go to the funeral if I wanted to pay my respects but agree with the others not to do the tid for tad thing.

 

[nitelite]

I do not go to funerals. I pay my respects when people are alive. I have made plans not to have a funeral of my own.

 

[Cookie]

I miss most of my relatives' funerals because I live across the country. Only attended both parents' which was really pretty grueling and expensive, what with the travel, staying with relatives and taking time off work, so now I just opt out.

 

[jujube]

Your experiences with funerals has me laughing and smiling. I can just picture it all! The worst thing that happened for me at a funeral is that I started laughing uncontrollably, it was my grandfather's funeral and he had done some pretty bad things to me.

Back to the OP. I would go to the funeral if I wanted to pay my respects but agree with the others not to do the tid for tad thing.

Oh my god, we did the same thing at my grandfather's funeral.

It wasn't that we were laughing about him (as we loved him dearly), but at my foster brother's organ playing.

My grandfather's favorite hymn was "The Old Rugged Cross" and my grandmother had asked him to play it while she went into the room where the coffin was alone to say goodbye to Grandpa before they closed the casket. We were all in the "family room" next door. My foster brother was a very flamboyant organist and started in on the hymn in an ordinary manner and then got "inspired". He threw in arpeggios, he tossed in some glissandos, he improvised, he jazzed it up....you get the picture. Liberace would have been jealous, is all I can say. It got more and more elaborate. And loud....very loud.

My sisters and I looked at each other and started laughing. We tried to stop; we'd get stopped and then it would start over again. My mother was hissing at us to shut up before Grandma came back into the room; we couldn't. Finally, we decamped en masse to the ladies' room, where we finally calmed down and cooled down. My grandmother would have had a heart attack if she saw us laughing like that.

Afterward, she went on and on about how beautiful the rendition was and "how elegant". Every time she'd start talking about it, I'd have to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out laughing. There's no way I could have looked at my sisters or we would have started up again.

It's funny what makes you laugh at the wrong times.

 

[Ruthanne]

Oh my god, we did the same thing at my grandfather's funeral.

It wasn't that we were laughing about him (as we loved him dearly), but at my foster brother's organ playing.

My grandfather's favorite hymn was "The Old Rugged Cross" and my grandmother had asked him to play it while she went into the room where the coffin was alone to say goodbye to Grandpa before they closed the casket. We were all in the "family room" next door. My foster brother was a very flamboyant organist and started in on the hymn in an ordinary manner and then got "inspired". He threw in arpeggios, he tossed in some glissandos, he improvised, he jazzed it up....you get the picture. Liberace would have been jealous, is all I can say. It got more and more elaborate. And loud....very loud.

My sisters and I looked at each other and started laughing. We tried to stop; we'd get stopped and then it would start over again. My mother was hissing at us to shut up before Grandma came back into the room; we couldn't. Finally, we decamped en masse to the ladies' room, where we finally calmed down and cooled down. My grandmother would have had a heart attack if she saw us laughing like that.

Afterward, she went on and on about how beautiful the rendition was and "how elegant". Every time she'd start talking about it, I'd have to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out laughing. There's no way I could have looked at my sisters or we would have started up again.

It's funny what makes you laugh at the wrong times.

I can just imagine that. I would've been laughing, too!

 

[Debby]

You always tell the best stories and anecdotes jujube! You should add 'authoring' to your list of accomplishments because it seems like you have a never ending supply of stories.

As for the OP, I think each case is different. Just a couple months before my aunt died, I travelled to the little town where she was living and we had a three day marathon visit and when she died, I stayed home. I went for her, not the rest of the family.

I guess too though, if you think that your showing up might get a scene going because there's really bad feelings, then I wouldn't go because I would want to upstage the reason that we were all gathered. Lots of variables I guess.